


Small Joys

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Series: Among the Trees [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Azazel (Supernatural)'s Special Children, Dean Has Powers, Dean is a Hufflepuff, Gen, Hufflepuff Dean, Intuition, Mary Winchester Lives, Muteness, Nonverbal Communication, Not a Crossover, Queer Gen, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Small Queer Kids, Telepathy, Young Winchesters (Supernatural), because they exist, but not literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-11 05:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13517364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Dean has sensed something about some of the kids that go to his and Sammy's school. Dean's intuition is usually right. And he knows when kids need friends.





	1. Chapter 1

The skunk of years past was first. But Dean’s intuition continues to grow. There are things he knows, right under his skin. It’s almost as if he hears whispers among the trees.

Both Sam and Dean are comfortable where they are, but it’s Dean who brings in the strays, far-flung as they are. When Sammy is five and Dean is nine, he watches his brother on the playground. He watches the whole class.

There are two kids who sit by themselves. They’re Sammy’s age, but in a different class, and Dean knows to watch them too. One day he asks permission of everyone for them to come home together on the schoolbus, and Mary is startled that Dean wants to bring anything into their lives that isn’t a woodland creature.

Sam’s not so sure either, but when he sits in the dark holding his head the night before the planned get-together, Dean says, “They have that too, Sammy.”

Sam looks up and smiles with glistening eyes and a pained expression. “Really, Dean? Can they do stuff?”

And Mary jumps.

She’s never said anything to Sam or Dean about what she saw in the mirror (the hell that was John Winchester raising her boys, her babies).

“I dunno, Sammy, we gotta ask ‘em. We can ask ‘em anything once they’re here.”

“I did ask ‘em some stuff, but only one of them has words,” Sam says. “Kinda like you when you’re outside.”

Dean just nods and gives a thumbs up, for effect, Mary thinks, and that’s good. Dean is such a good, attentive (scared) big brother.

He gives Sam such a patented _We’ll see_ expression without words that Mary laughs.

“C’mere, kids. I’ll make cookies for tomorrow when your friends are here, and you can lick the spoon.”

Mary thinks quietly of the woods, how dark and deep they are, and how they protect them. Like a pact she has with them. If they weren’t there, who knows what would happen to any boy with Winchester-Campbell blood.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, there are cookies, a big plate of three kinds. Mary is bone tired, but she’ll eat whatever is left over when the kids have gone home.

The cabin was spare when they first found it, flush to the ground and thus with an entryway sometimes full of pine needles and scent, but she’s glad today. She knows who’s coming, more or less, though she’s never met the kids yet. Leave it to intrepid Dean to set something up that could still surprise her.

No matter how they’re doing, the kids will still be able to get inside the house, and that’s the main thing. The corners will be tight, but she’s not too worried about that. 

If she hadn’t raised a boy who went quiet so much she’s not sure how she’d feel about making sure the kids got what they needed, but she knows Sammy and Dean will be able to help.

And so the kids come barreling down the path from the bus stop, all four of them, at 3:35, and she’s as ready as she’ll ever be.

There’s a pale blond boy named Doug who carries an inhaler and other medical supplies in a little pack around his waist. (“I have these. I’m okay,” he says, and he’s tired, he’s very, very tired with red-rimmed eyes and a gaunt face.) He sticks like glue to the other child, named Jeremy, interpreting signals from a body that is continually in motion. He’s good at it, the way Sammy and Dean are good at it. Like they were born talking to each other without words.

It makes Mary smile. It might be a sad smile, as she thinks of the youth that gets stolen from some children. But the way these kids are, they fit together, like they were supposed to find each other, too. And she can feel the love pulsing quickly in four hearts, the quiet way her boys bring these two in, to come home, and welcome them.

The four of them are in the living room, and Sam naturally does most of the talking, but everyone knows Dean’s in charge. He’s taller and those are the rules. Dean settles in between all “his” kids and goes quiet, which Mary knows now is his way of seeking and finding peace.

That leaves Sam to ask the questions.

Jeremy keeps his eyes locked on Sam when he’s not answering questions. Some of them he answers by pointing into a book full of pictures. (Doug says he asked Jeremy’s mom to add some words to it for him.) But some of them….

It’s so quiet. And Mary decides it’s time for her to leave the room.

*~*~*

“Does Doug help you with your headaches?” Sam asks.

Somewhere in among Jeremy’s movements is a shrug. Dean can see it.

They know Doug helps with most things. Like the way he asked Jeremy what kind of cookies he wanted and broke one in a few pieces on the tray attached to Jer’s chair.

He leans a little against Jeremy when he coughs, letting the boy’s wheelchair brace him, but slowly, slowly, Jeremy gets an arm around him and even thumps a few times on his back. Doug gives a thumbs up, spits into a tissue, and sighs.

“You got it,” he says, and Jeremy smiles.

Teamwork.

*~*~*

Before eating cookies, Doug takes pills. Maybe it takes a lot of planning to eat stuff, Dean thinks. When Dean is feeling quiet, he sort of plans things, but usually Sam just knows what he’s supposed to do. Maybe it’s a little bit the same with the kids. That’s what he thought when he saw them together.

Truthfully, he’s pretty sure they kick butt.

There are other things, though.

Jeremy has a stare that just tells you he is seeing everything, maybe even things nobody else sees. Dean sort of wants to know about it, and he can tell Sam does too.

Maybe they’ll find out.

Maybe they’ll stay friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like these kids. They've been with me (at a variety of ages) since I was relatively young, and this is the first time I'm writing them in a while. I had always wanted to bring some version of them into my fandom work, even though they have their own universe. I just really wanted people to meet them, so I hope this goes well. :) Doug and Jer are some of the best people I know. It's been a little while, and is a bit emotional for me to "bring them out." So...but here they are.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Writing Doug and Jer is easy because I know their story but emotionally difficult because of how long they've been with me. I know I keep saying this but STILL TRUE.

The house is quiet like it often is, but it seems somehow like the force of the relative silence is larger somehow.

It means something bigger.

Mary stays in the kitchen, cutting sandwiches and cleaning, and she thinks, this is some kind of pivotal mom moment. Here she is and her two kids have friends over. And it could be loud in here and instead you could hear a pin drop. 

Occasionally Sam asks something, but his questions are punctuated by a whole lot of quiet.

Even she’s used to Dean talking more than this inside the house.

Still, she’s a Campbell, and Campbells are, as a rule, surprised by nothing. She’ll keep telling herself that. Nothing except, maybe, their kids. She’ll have to add a corollary to the rule.

*~*~*

Deen is happy and relaxed. He can tell these new kids are already becoming part of his little circle. They’re as entranced by Sammy as he sometimes is. And somehow he knows he’s missing half the conversation, a conversation that doesn’t have to happen in words.

It’s three kids realizing, essentially, they are the same, and he knows when Sammy started to know that about Dean they didn’t need words either.

They’re making up a team. It’ll just be a bigger team than him and Sam. They can handle that, right?

Sure. Of course they can.

And if the center of gravity shifts a little bit, so that they learn the important ways to protect each other, that’s fine too.

Dean can handle it. Sam’s already handling it like a champ.

He can imagine the way they’ll talk to each other now at school.

_My brother brought you home, so you’re family now, that’s how it works. Like my skunk, squiggle, except better because my mom can give you food. Right?_

Dean smiles. And then he says, slightly hoarse, “Anyone want more cookies?” and he hands them out, like a good big brother.

*~*~*

They don’t find out everything about Doug and Jeremy in one day, but they do a lot more talking in the silence than most people could. 

Jeremy feels comfortable. They know because when it’s time to go home he doesn’t want to leave.

Mary is starting to see some of why Doug and Jeremy stick so close together.

There’s something neither of them wants to face alone.

Maybe her boys will help with all of it. 

It’s no mistake for Dean to bring them home. There’s something working out in front of her that she can’t put all the pieces of together yet. But she’s a Campbell, one of the last, and that means she’ll get it eventually. Or even sooner than eventually.

If she was like Dean, she’d ask the woods. But she’s a small-town girl, a one-diner town girl, and not a woodsman like Dean has already become.

Maybe she’ll find it reading lore.

She thinks of who she might call and laughs quietly to herself--they’re all dead, and maybe good riddance. Maybe the answer is to root out hunting itself. She’s certainly tried her best.

But she can feel it, how they’re still not a family like any other, and one day the woods won’t be enough. Not to push this back. Not with these children here.

She doesn’t know who will try to claim them as their own handiwork, but it will come for them and she’ll have to be ready. They will too.

Mary hefts a knife lightly as she finishes the dishes.

She’s got more kids to protect. 

And they’ll be ready.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day at school, Jeremy and Doug are both moving with an added lightness. Jeremy is as silent as ever, but he is smiling readily, and a few times he lets his head visibly fall on Doug’s shoulder and Doug touches his hair lightly. They feel connected--more connected--and they’re not going to lose ground.

The Winchesters hover close, but the truth is that if either of the smaller boys needed them they could call slently for help, and they’ll keep it as their little secret for as long as they can but no one on that playground at recess minds if someone finds out--they’re family now.

The next weekend, the four of them are back at Mary’s and she can see that even during the week an easy comraderie has built. Dean talks to them, out loud, in the house, and that in itself is a sign of trust. It’s nothing so simple as Dean not liking his voice, it’s just that he finds the quiet is his own space and he doesn’t always want to venture out of it.

Dean and Jeremy exchange a few looks--Jer knows. And when Dean talks to him, he’s quieter, too, not silent necessarily, but quieter.

The four of them are probably the quietest kids Mary could have ever asked for. Considering it seemed her family had just about doubled in size, this wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

She would sit in the corner reading TV Guide or Readers Digest, and if anything major happened, she knew one of her boys would come and get her.

Of course, in a Winchester-Campbell household, “major” still left open plenty of possibilities. And yet she knew the trees were there, covering them in quiet and peace.

She learned as she went, and one thing that she knew was how much safer everyone was at her home. Even the other parents seemed to know, and she didn’t try to dwell too much on that. There would be plenty of time to think on it as the kids grew.

In one corner of the kitchen, Dean was making the sandwiches this time.

Sam was laughing, long, easy giggles, and Mary thought they were the best thing she’d ever heard. She could go on hearing that giggle forever.

This was the best way to make a family. All of these small joys that were hers now--were theirs.


End file.
